Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Arts, Humanities, and Interpretive Social Sciences at Duke Kunshan University
Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center
Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center (HRC) promotes research and creative expression in the arts and humanities, and encourages interdisciplinary efforts. Working in close partnership with Duke’s Franklin Humanities Institute, the HRC functions as a key research bridge between faculty and students at Duke and DKU. In addition, the HRC facilitates co-curricular research training, treating the entire DKU campus as a laboratory for humanities research.
The HRC lies at the core of DKU’s mission to reinvent liberal arts and science education in a 21st century global context. We bring students, researchers and faculty together to investigate the fundamental questions of human being, and to bring the power of the humanities to bear on the pressing questions of the present age. In particular, humanities research contributes to DKU’s seven animating principles.
Address
Humanities Research Center
Duke Kunshan University
8 Duke Avenue
Kunshan, Jiangsu
215316 China
By Chengxi Yin, class of 2026, Photo by Ruixiang Hu, class of 2027 On December 3, 2024, Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center, Gender Studies Lab, Dr. Crystal Kwok, and her students unveiled their collaborative exhibition, Unbound: Flow and Resistance, in the HUM Space. The event was a landmark occasion for the university, blending art, …
Date: December 4 & 5 Time: 11-1:30 pm Location: CCTW 1st floor outside Family Mart The LilyPad is releasing our Fall 2024 Magazine this week! This magazine is a collection of the editors’ favorite LilyPad stories published by DKU students this semester, with sections including Student Life, Environment, Health & Wellness, Arts & Literature, Global Politics, Travel …
9:08pm | IB 1008 Come alive again this week 7 with the Nighthawks & Peter Weir‘s 1989 Dead Poetry Society (…& food & drink). Thu Dec 5, 9:08pm IB 1008. *** Superdeep Nighthawks meet on Thu eve (~9pm till late); more info here. To propose a screening, follow this link; for more info on Superdeep …
Humanities Labs engage undergraduates in advanced research alongside faculty and graduate student mentors/collaborators from DKU and Duke. Organized around a central theme, each lab brings together at least two faculty and students from the humanities and other disciplines in interdisciplinary, vertically integrated research projects. Labs may be co-located at Duke.
The Humanities Research Center hosts two annual conferences. A fall conference showcases the research of DKU faculty. A spring conference fosters research capacity among undergraduate students.
Book Manuscript Workshops support DKU professors in the tenure and promotion process.
Research Workshops
Research Workshops support the production of an edited book or special issue of a journal by bringing researchers together for meetings on the DKU campus.
Apply for Funding from the Humanities Research Center
Faculty
Faculty affiliated with DKU or Duke are invited to apply for funding for projects with a humanistic aspect to be undertaken at DKU or jointly between DKU and Duke.
Students
All students at DKU are eligible to apply for positions as student fellows in a number of activities and research labs at the Humanities Research Center.
People
The Humanities Research Center is led by two co-directors, Selina Lai-Henderson at Duke Kunshan University, and Carlos Rojas at Duke University. The co-directors work with an advisory board of scholars from both universities. The center welcomes the involvement of all Duke faculty, DKU faculty, and affiliated scholars whose work has a humanistic dimension.
Selina Lai-Henderson’s research is at the heart of transnational American Studies, where she locates works of American literature in twentieth-century China and in translation. She is the author of Mark Twain in China (Stanford University Press, 2015). In addition to The Yale Review, MELUS, and Journal of Transnational American Studies, her work has appeared in Mark Twain in Context (2019) and Langston Hughes in Context (2022), both published by Cambridge University Press. Her recent essay, “‘You Are No Darker Than I Am:’ The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China” (PMLA, Sep 2023), is the 2023 winner of the 1921 Prize in American Literature (tenured category).
Lai-Henderson has served as Chair and co-Chair (with Perin Gurel at Notre Dame) of American Studies Association’s International Committee (2022-2024). She is currently a Book Review Editor for the American Quarterly (flagship publication of the ASA). Her editorial roles extend to Global Nineteenth Century Studies, and previously, Journal of Transnational American Studies. In Spring 2025, she will be joining Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research as a Hutchins Family Fellow.
Carlos Rojas is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; and Arts of the Moving Image. His research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies, particularly as they relate to the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global Chinese diaspora. He works primarily in the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods. He is the author of three books: The Naked Gaze: Reflection on Chinese Modernity, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, and Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation.
He is the co-editor of five books: Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (with David Der-wei Wang), Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (with Andrea Bachner), and Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China (with Ralph Litzinger). He is also the translator of five volumes of literary fiction, including Yu Hua’s Brothers (translated with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, and shortlisted for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize), Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses, The Four Books, The Explosion Chronicles, and Marrow (of which The Four Books shortlisted for both the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and the 2016 FT/Oppenheimer Emerging Voices Award), and Malaysian Chinese author Ng Kim Chew’s Slow Boat to China and Other Stories.
Ranjana Khanna, PhD (ex officio)
Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and the Literature Program at Duke University, and Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute